The invention concerns a device to center, at the base of a corkscrew, the upper part of the neck of a bottle from which it is intended to remove the cork.
This device is particularly indicated when it is intended to uncork bottles which have very different diameters at the upper end of the neck and particularly when it is desired to perform a controlled uncorking and hence to establish how much the wormscrew has to penetrate into the cork.
Normally double-lever corkscrews or similar which are used to remove real or synthetic corks from a bottle have at the base, in correspondence and below the abutment point, a sort of conical cavity which serves as a receptacle for the upper part of the neck in order, in one way or another, to center the cork in correspondence with the tip of the wormscrew which must penetrate therein in order to subsequently remove it.
It is important that the wormscrew penetrates the center of the cork and perpendicularly; it is also important that the cork is removed in this direction, because screwing in the wormscrew laterally and obliquely is the main reason for breakages, both of the wormscrew and of the necks of the bottles.
From WO-A-99-52809 of the same Applicant, it is known a device to automatically uncork a bottle wherein it is possible to regulate how much the wormscrew has to penetrate into the cork in order to be able to remove it without making a hole in the base thereof, so as not to make bits of cork fall onto the liquid; moreover, with this system, when necessary, it is also possible to remove the cork only partly (partial uncorking), and the uncorking can be completed later manually when the bottle is to be used.
In order to obtain this result with the known method, it is indispensable that the upper part of the neck of the bottle always abuts at a fixed point, which will normally be the point, more or less, where the tip of the wormscrew reaches.
As long as traditional bottles with bulges (a thickening of the upper part of the neck) are used, which are normally between 33 and 27 mm in diameter, everything proceeds normally.
However, in recent years bottles of very different shapes have appeared on the market and, especially from the USA bottles have arrived which have necks widened at the top and which even reach 40 mm in diameter.
These bottles, with such abnormal thickenings, sometimes cannot even be included in the receptacle cone of a normal corkscrew.
To remove the cork of such bottles it is possible to widen the base of the cone and construct the receptacle almost plane in the abutment part.
But by doing this we shall never have a good centering, considering the differences in diameter with which we have to work.
On the contrary, if we widen only the base of the cone and extend it to receive any diameter, we shall certainly obtain a good centering, but while the bottles with a smaller diameter will abut at the right point where the tip of the wormscrew arrives, other bottles, with greater diameters, will go onto the wall of the cone and, according to the angle thereof, will abut and be located at different distances from the tip of the wormscrew according to the diameters of the various necks of the bottles.
These distances can also be several millimeters and this will no longer permit a controlled and regulated penetration of the wormscrew into the cork.
Bottles which are not well centered, are held oblique with respect to the wormscrew, are located at different distances from the correct abutment point, lead to extractions which cannot be regulated, are improperly carried out, and can even lead to the breakage of the wormscrew, or the cork or even the glass.
The present Applicant has found the method which we shall now describe, in order to overcome these shortcomings, to perform a correct and controlled uncorking and, as much as possible, to prevent breakages.
Normally a double-lever corkscrew comprises two vertical rods or a tube inside which the wormscrew turns parallel; the tube will serve to collect the cork once it has been removed from the bottle. It widens at the base under the tip of the wormscrew so as to form a cone which serves as a centering receptacle and its highest part acts as an abutment element for the neck of the bottle.
The tube and the conical receptacle are made in a single piece.
In this way every different diameter of the upper part of the neck of a bottle will abut on the walls of the cone at different distances from the tip of the wormscrew.
The present invention consists in having made of the tube and the conical receptacle two independent bodies in such a manner that the centering cone can slide upwards, outside the collection tube, once a bottle neck which is wider than normal is introduced therein and thrust in abutment.
With this device, the upper part of the neck will always abut centered on a well established point and that is on the lower part of the collection tube where, always in that position, there is the tip of the wormscrew which will have to penetrate into the cork.